


Midnight

by DarkObsessions



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan)
Genre: Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Manipulation, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, No Fluff, Self Sabotaging Behaviour, Toxic Relationships, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Life Choices, Unreliable Narrator, reference to physical abuse, unequal power dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:14:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27143680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkObsessions/pseuds/DarkObsessions
Summary: The implications here are not lost on me. I'm not stupid, I know how fucked up all this sounds and I'm aware there's nothing healthy about the way he makes me feel. I was a psychiatrist, for Christ's sake. But that knowledge does nothing to temper the way my blood is humming, the way this muddled amalgamation of fear and excitement has my head spinning.
Relationships: Joker (DCU)/Harleen Quinzel
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	Midnight

**TRIGGER WARNINGS:** Please take note of the tags listed on this work, they are important. This is a relatively dark take on a Nolan-Verse Harley and her relationship with the Joker, so please proceed with caution or turn back if that isn't something that interests you.

  
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I wake with a start, jolting upright in the dark of Pam's guestroom with my chest tight and my heart in my throat. I don't know what woke me. I don't even remember dreaming of anything specific. But I can still taste the fear; this rolling, anxious apprehension toward something unseen yet keenly sensed. My blood feels hot in my veins, my skin slickened with a glossy sheen of sweat.

I tell myself it's nothing, that it was only a silly nightmare and I just need to relax. But that feeling of unease doesn't fade, it lingers, hovering over me like a tangible thing. It feels heavy. Restless. Like I'm being watched.

I yank the blankets up to my chin despite the fact that it's too warm to be comfortable and makes me feel foolish. I'm even more annoyed with myself when my eyes begin scouring the darkness with an almost neurotic sort of wariness. It all feels so childish, this scanning the shadows for boogeymen after a nightmare, like I'm five years old all over again. It's ridiculous. Especially since I haven't seen or heard from this particular boogeyman in over a week. The thought that he might not even be missing me has my stomach twisting, makes me yearn to snatch up that new burner phone Pam gave me and give him a call. Remind him how much he needs me. Because he _does_ need me _._ Even if he'd rather chew glass that admit it. But it's best not to think about that right now.

My eyes slide over the closed closest doors and across the left wall to the corner of the room, just a few feet off from the foot of the bed. The shadows are darkest there, having shied away from the few pitiful slivers of street light slipping in through the crack in the drawn curtains, and sliding across the bed in a fractured line.

I know there's a freestanding coat rack in that corner, and that it's littered with a bunch of Pam's various coats and scarves. But in the dark, that knowledge does little to stop me from thinking that coat rack looks an awful lot like the silhouette of a man. A particularly tall and broad shouldered man. I stare at that corner for a long time, the heat of my blankets stifling me and my ears ringing with the kind of whining shrillness you can only ever hear while submerged in total silence. I stare so long that my eyes begin to burn and grow heavy, and I'm all too eager to welcome sleep when the creeping drowsiness that's finally starts settling in around me.

I'm just beginning to doze off, my eyes just barely drifting closed, when that coat rack moves.

I don't think I've ever moved so fast as I do in this moment. I'm out of bed, switching on the bedside lamp and turning to face that corner quicker than a toupee takes flight in a hurricane.

My heart is racing, my body rigid and tense. I was so sure something moved. I _saw_ it. But in the cold light of the bedside lamp, I'm alone. That coat rack is just a coat rack, and there's nothing and no one in this room but me.

Feeling even more foolish and agitated than I did before, I slip back under the covers and force myself to close my eyes and lay still in a desperate pursuit of sleep. But I leave the light on.

The next morning I'm padding off into the adjoining bathroom to relieve myself, only just past the door's threshold, when I catch sight of my reflection in the bathroom mirror. That reflection stops me dead in my tracks, knocks the air clean out of me. For a moment, I don't even breathe. It isn't the mottled spattering of old bruising streaked across my face and shoulder that startles me. I'm familiar with the sight of those, with the healing process' transitional pattern of vivid, blooming colour.

No, it's not the bruises that has my skin prickling and my stomach tightening. It's the greasepaint. I've got a white streak of grease paint smeared across my right cheek. And another smaller one smudged across my collarbone. I haven't worn grease paint in weeks.  
  
Fear curls low in my gut even as an all too familiar thrill shoots straight up my spine. The conflict of those two sensations is near dizzying, just like they always are. I reach up to touch the smear that mars my collarbone, and my fingers coming away tacky and white. It wasn't any nightmare that woke me last night. I wasn't alone at all. I lift my gaze from the paint smeared across my fingers to meet my own eyes in the mirror.  
  
My boogeyman was here. In my room. While I slept.

He was slinking about in the dark like some malignant shadow while I laid there oblivious and exposed. Vulnerable.

The thought has my heart quickening, the hair on the back of my neck pricking up to stand at rapt attention as goosebumps break across the flesh of my forearms. I swallow thickly, my throat suddenly dry and tight as I stare at my paint smeared reflection.

This was a violation, a deliberate invasion of my privacy and personal boundaries. I'm agitated. Unnerved and disturbed. But under that, slithering around beneath the fear and apprehension, there's another part of me that feels... Juiced up. Alive, for the first time in as many days as I've been apart from him. This understanding that he actively sought me out, felt compelled enough to break into Pam's place just to lurk about and lay hands on me, has heat unfurling in my chest. He was thinking about me. He wanted me to know he was here, wants me fretting and fixated, agonizing over all the things he could have done—or possibly did do—while I laid there like some helpless lamb. This thought sets my teeth on edge just as much as it feeds the fire in my belly, and I have to grip the edge of the bathroom counter to try and ground myself.

The implications here are not lost on me. I'm not stupid, I know how fucked up all this sounds and I'm aware there's nothing healthy about the way he makes me feel. I was a psychiatrist, for Christ's sake. But that knowledge does nothing to temper the way my blood is humming, the way this muddled amalgamation of fear and excitement has my head spinning. It'd be so much easier to just let go, to just ride this wave and say to _hell_ with the consequences. I've been there before. I remember the heady taste of that sort of freedom, the intoxicating sense of relief that comes with finally relinquishing control. I've never felt more whole, more _myself_ , than I do under the guiding heat of his calloused hands.

That's how I know this separation can never last. I won't withstand it. I don't even think I really want to. I can't bear the thought of slipping that conformity mask back on, of spending the rest of my life pretending this sickness doesn't feed me just as much as it kills me. He knows as well as I do how this little charade of ours is gonna play out. It was only ever going to end one way. With me, down on my knees while he cups my chin and preens.

But I've always been stubborn, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna to make it easy on him this time.

And with that cheerfully destitute thought, I snatch up the hand towel from the rack beside me to fervently scrape it along my cheek and collarbone with admittedly more haste than strictly necessary. After making sure I've scrubbed away any lingering residual evidence of his presence, I toss the sullied towel into the basin of the sink and wrestle my tangled hair up into a messy knot on the top of my head. It's half assed at best, but a quick once over in the mirror leaves me reasonably satisfied, and I'm turning on my heel and stomping back into the bedroom with my next breath.

I take a second to stand in the doorway and peer critically around the room, briefly considering the possibility that he might still be lurking around the house somewhere. But I dismiss the thought almost as soon as it rises. I already know he's long gone.

Still vibrating with something pent up and hot, I huff out a resigned and frustrated breath, roll up the sleeves of my over-sized sleep shirt, and set about tearing that damn room apart. When I'm done ransacking this one, I'll move on to scouring the rest of the house. I need to make sure he didn't leave me any other unexpected little _gifts_.  
  
The last thing I need is for Red to get home, find something out of place or unfamiliar, and start asking questions I have absolutely _no_ interest in answering. Or worse, open some random innocuous drawer and have something blow up in her face...

I can practically see the smug delight shining his black eyes as I rummage through the last of four dresser drawers and find it just as plainly inoffensive as the first three were. I can taste his sneering satisfaction as I rip the bedspread and sheets from the mattress, checking it and the box spring for any breaches. I can almost hear him simpering behind me in my ear as I turn the closet inside out, flinging contents in every direction. My spine is itching with an embittered sort of panicked fury as I empty out the clothes hamper onto the floor and kick through it. Coming up empty yet again, I let out a frustrated howl and dash back into the bathroom to tear through the towel and medicine cabinets with reckless abandon. I even try checking the back of the toilet and running my hands along the underside of the bathroom counter in search of anything he might've taped down.

By the time I've finished in here, my chest is heaving and my skin is flushed with exasperated exertion. I'm furious. Terrified. Keyed up and riding on edge. I hate that he has this kind of power. I hate that some part of me likes it, that even as I'm afraid of what I might find, I think I _want_ to find something. I _want_ him to have left me something. Christ, it's certifiable.

Standing amidst the chaos I've created, I rake a hand through my disheveled hair, attempting to shove aside the loosened strands that have managed to escape my haphazard bun. But then something hits me, something I probably should have considered before I started trashing Pam's guestroom and bath.  
  
My stomach clenches, my jaw tightening along with my fists as I shut my eyes and make a point of trying to breath through my nose. It occurs to me that—no matter what he did or didn't leave here—the sight of me now, wild eyed and rabid amid this wreckage of my own making, would absolutely thrill him. He'd be downright tickled.

And even though the thought of pleasing him this way exhilarates and satisfies some gnarled and vitiated part of me, I'm resentful of the notion that I've once again played straight into his hands. While it's possible he might've left something here just to screw with me, it's just as likely he hasn't left anything at all. More likely, even. Because just knowing I'm going to drive myself mad with the worrying, tearing this place apart in search of clues that don't exist, is probably more than enough to do it for him. He wins either way.

The reality is, it hardly matters what I do at this point. He's already sent out the message, and I've received it loud and clear.

I _wanted_ his attention. And now I _have_ it.

Fuck.


End file.
